‘Brother Orange’: Warner Bros. Teaming With BuzzFeed Motion Pictures on Film About the Viral Sensation

Ilana Glazer and Ellen DeGeneres are co-executive producing the project.

If a company gets big enough, it will eventually start making movies — just ask WWE, Amazon and now BuzzFeed. Warner Bros. is partnering with the website to develop “Brother Orange,” a dramatization of an incident involving BuzzFeed editor Matt Stopera that began when his iPhone was stolen and turned him into a celebrity in China. “Broad City” co-creator Ilana Glazer and Ellen DeGeneres will co-executive produce along with Stopera and Jeff Kleeman.

Over the course of more than a year, Stopera’s phone made its way across the continent and eventually to China, where photos of the eponymous man (real name Li Hongjun) started flooding his photo stream. After several stories on the bizarre incident, which went viral both domestically and in China, the two met up, became friends and appeared on “Ellen” together.

“Brother Orange” marks the first project by BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, which officially launched two years ago and whose Michael Shamberg and Matthew Henick will co-produce. According to the Hollywood Reporter, who first broke the news, the story will focus on the accidental friendship that arose between Stopera and Li.